For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Bhavani Etikala In Telugu cinema, caste issues and atrocities were untouched concepts on the big screen until late. In 2020, Palasa 1978, a period-revenge-drama set in the 80’s, was released. Debut director Karuna Kumar said that the film was based on real incidents. The movie acknowledged the deep rooted reality of castesim in the …
Prof. P. Kesava Kumar Bojja Tharakam (1939-2016), a Dalit leader of high eminence, passed away on 17th September 2016. He was a well-known Dalit leader with multiple facets to his personality. He left his mark on most of the democratic struggles of Telugu society in post independence India. He was a people’s leader, civil …
Karthik Navayan Bojja Tharakam (1939-2016). From Radical Students Union (RSU), Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF), Scheduled Castes Students’ Federation (SCSF), Ambedkar Yuvajana Sangham (AYS), Rythu Coolie Sangham (RCS – Farm Workers’ Union of which he was an advisor), Republican Party of India to Andhra Pradesh Dalita Mahasabha. From a student leader organising a month long …
P. Manikanta “Virtue has become caste-ridden and morality has become, caste- bound.” ~ Dr. B. R. Ambedkar The Patna high court verdict on the Laxmanpur Bathe massacre has once again made the Bahujans think about the Brahminical state which is actively preventing India from achieving the state of democracy that had prevailed in Buddhist …
Unnamati Syama Sundar [On 17th July, 1985, the Kamma landlords of Karamchedu (7 km away from Chirala town in Prakasam District of Andhra Pradesh) and other neighbouring villages attacked the Dalit wada in the village and in the organized violence that followed, eight Dalit villagers were brutally massacred. Dr. Kathi Padma Rao writes: Two …
Karthik Navayan (This is a slightly revised version of an article written in 2006) The publicity that was given to the incidents of burning of five railway bogies and vandalizing of a hundred bus windows was not extended to the massacre of four members of a single family. The upper caste media widely, and …
N. Sukumar and Shailaja Menon A sad day indeed when the news flashed that Afzal Guru who was convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack was executed. After a lot of dilly dallying when the powers that be accused each other of being soft on terror, Guru was legally encountered to silence the critics. However, the …
Dalit Camera: Through Un-Touchable Eyes [In this interview Duddu Prabhakar, veteran Dalit rights activist and President of the ‘Kula Nirmoolana Porata Samithi’ (‘Struggle Committee for Eradication of Caste’, roughly), traces the history of the Dalit movement in Andhra Pradesh from Karamchedu in 1985 to Lakshimpeta in 2012, and says the movement now has to decide …
Ravi Chandran All the atrocities committed on Dalits are a result of Dalit assertion. This was also exposed on the intellectual level recently, when some Dalits theorized on the Ambedkar cartoon and the non-Dalit intellectuals joined hands for an all out war against them; in this too they found a few amenable Dalit intellectuals …